Authenticx is a company that was founded to be a solution for healthcare to listen at scale. And it is used for turning conversations into actionable insights to reveal transformational opportunities in healthcare. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Authenticx founder and CEO Amy Brown to learn more about the company.
Amy Brown’s Background
What is Amy Brown’s background? Brown said:
“I have a strong passion for advocacy, which led me towards a career that served humans in healthcare. I spent two decades working in a variety of settings across the healthcare, pharma and insurance spaces – from small companies to publicly traded enterprises.”
Formation Of Authenticx
How did the idea for Authenticx come together? Brown shared:
“Time and time again, I watched organizations attempt to understand their customers by sending surveys and robocalls, which resulted in limited responses and insights. Specifically, during my time as COO of a health insurance company, I realized that if we could elevate and escalate the voices of customers to executives, we could drive meaningful change. The challenge, however, was that my team and I had no systematic way to pull those insights out of contact centers. The combination of my original passion for advocacy and business experience in operations, particularly contact centers, led to the idea for Authenticx.”
“By taking the recorded customer interactions that are already occurring—calls, emails, or chats—and using AI and natural language processing, we discern insights from those conversations, helping the healthcare industry “feel the pulse” of their customer by listening for the things that matter most.”
“Authenticx was founded on the belief that if we all had a greater understanding of each other, we could better respond with empathy and effectiveness. Oftentimes, people react based on false assumptions, inaccurate data, or simply a lack of knowledge or unfamiliarity. If I could inspire a movement, I’d like to help people ‘walk a mile’ in another perspective in an effort to inspire and connect to make real change in the world.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Brown’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Brown reflected:
“In January 2020, we got to a stage in our company where we had gained enough traction that it was time to raise capital. I never would have imagined the rapid growth our company has seen in an almost entirely virtual environment. As of today, we’ve grown to over 130 employees. Easily this has been my favorite aspect of our company story and for me as a leader, working with a great group of people every day.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Brown explained:
“Authenticx helps healthcare organizations listen to conversations at scale. Our platform blends human and automated AI analysis to unlock the value of existing customer conversations (like voice, chat, or emails) and bring those insights to the right teams and leaders with comprehensive reporting and digestible dashboards.”
“Using existing data that has historically been stored and ignored in organizations, Authenticx reveals hidden barriers, motivators, and powerful customer perceptions so leaders can confidently make decisions and build a better customer experience. With a suite of solutions that includes always-evolving GenAI capabilities and healthcare-specific AI models, Authenticx provides market insights, agent quality evaluations, and compliance oversight for enterprise healthcare teams.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Brown and the team faced in building the company? Brown acknowledged:
“AI offerings are now plentiful, and the solution space is noisy. Solutions that are adopted without a clear ROI or with the hope of a silver bullet fix are short-sighted and will leave leaders disappointed in results. There is also ongoing discussion and response to AI governance and consideration around the need for guidance and leadership in this space.”
“To begin to overcome these challenges, my team has focused on how AI can be impactful and strategically leveraged to solve industry problems. We have intentionally invested in healthcare-specific large language models by people with expertise in healthcare, social work, listening for data insights, and validating AI models.”
Evolution Of Authenticx’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Brown noted:
“We are currently in a very popular space as an AI-driven tech company. What sets us apart is that we intentionally focus on and stay true to the heart of human voices while also building innovative tech and algorithms. We have leaned into developing AI models specifically built for healthcare, employing LLMs to summarize conversations, identify and monitor HIPAA-related interactions and topics, and locate instances of the Eddy Effect—the only commercially available customer friction model that identifies patient frustration, employee training opportunities, and barriers in continuing therapy. Other models are used to audit agent interactions events, identify and acknowledge safety events (such as product quality complaints), sentiment analysis, and agent quality.”
“Access to conversation data empowers healthcare organizations to become more agile and responsive to the market. The Authenticx platform leverages gathered data to point to causation and existing barriers patients face. We identify disruptions in conversations, then dive into the topics and themes that drove those obstacles in the first place. These insights are critical as the healthcare industry continues to innovate and invest in digital transformation to help streamline complex processes.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Brown cited:
Our most significant milestones are related to our rapid growth. We secured $8.8 million in Series A funding, scaling the Authenticx team from 6 to 53, followed by $20 million in Series B funding two years later. This growth earned recognition in 2023 as No. 349 on the Inc. 5000 and we were awarded as Tech Company of the Year in 2024 by Techpoint, Indiana’s initiative to develop an innovation economy and overall tech ecosystems. This growth has allowed us to successfully reach out and partner with large, global healthcare enterprises.
Customer Success Stories
When asking Brown about company success stories, she highlighted:
“Daily, we see the impact of listening to stories woven within conversational data. One of the first times I was presenting to clients, I underestimated the power listening can have. Most of the leaders we were presenting to had rarely, if ever, heard the direct voices of their customers. I could visually see people shifting and uncomfortable with what was being shared. From that experience, we learned the enormous power of storytelling.”
“These exchanges — whether recorded contact center calls, chat conversations or even human-chatbot interactions — hold a wealth of information that extends from the contact center to the boardroom. You can read more here about other Authenticx customer outcomes and success stories.”
Funding
When asking Brown about the company’s funding details, she revealed:
“In January 2023, Authenticx raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Blue Heron Capital with participation from Beringea, Indiana Next Level Fund/50 South Capital Advisors, High Alpha, Mutual Capital Partners, Signal Peak Ventures, Allos Ventures, Elevate Ventures and M25. This followed a previous 2021 Series A raise of $7.5 million.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Brown affirmed:
“Our platform is purpose-built to help healthcare teams leverage existing data to drive ideal outcomes for their clients and organizations. Healthcare as an industry faces ongoing and growing challenges of managing volume, access, and costs since all of us need to receive healthcare. AI is a tool that helps improve efficiencies, handle large volumes of data, and guide towards effective action. Being focused on healthcare allows our platform to drive high value and impact to our customers because our teams, tools, and AI models have been trained to pinpoint and understand healthcare terminology.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Brown pointed out:
“We plan to continue to lean in on healthcare-specific AI models that reliably provide insights on existing barriers inside the healthcare system. Future developments include providing real-time agent coaching recommendations, proactively identifying conversation trends due to frequency or topic content, and enhanced reporting capabilities.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Brown concluded:
“To solve the complex problems of our healthcare system, the healthcare industry needs to truly understand the impact our system has on the humans it serves. And to do that, healthcare leaders need to listen to actual customer voices at scale. Our healthcare systems are complex with countless government entities and corporate organizations participating in the care process that encompasses one-fifth of our country’s resource output. These problems and challenges are immense and complicated, no doubt. It will require all our attention and demand engagement and empathy as we look forward to more innovation and ideas.”
